Wednesday morning at quarter to ten found Allie walking past the sandstone facade of the County Buildings in Ayr, plastered with sleet by a vicious east wind. When she’d called to make her appointment with Brian McGillivray, the receptionist at WestBet had told her, ‘It’s just past the county offices on the opposite side of Wellington Street, you can’t miss it.’ If Allie had realised how long the County Buildings were, she wouldn’t have parked so close to the seafront. By the time she spotted the handsome double-fronted stuccoed building with its garish WestBet sign, she felt nothing like a tough investigative reporter ready to confront a criminal.
A heavy wooden front door stood open, leading to a small vestibule and a half-glazed door beyond, its brass fittings buffed and polished. Allie tried the handle, but it was locked. She pressed a bell push on the jamb and heard a distant peal. Through the glass, she saw approaching a compact middle-aged woman with a tight perm, a tweed skirt and a pale pink twinset. The woman peered at her, then opened the door. ‘You’ll be Alison Burns,’ she said. ‘Come away in, you must be perishing.’
Allie followed her inside, conscious of melted sleet dripping from her short dark hair. ‘I look like a drowned rat,’ she said, apologetic.
The woman glanced at her wristwatch. ‘You’ve got ten minutes before His Nibs is expecting you.’ She pointed down the hall. ‘There’s a ladies lavatory down there, away and give your hair a rub with a towel.’
Seven minutes later, Allie returned, hair still damp but less like an orphan of the storm. ‘Thank you.’
‘Nae bother. You don’t want to make a bad first impression. Follow me.’
Allie obeyed and they climbed a flight of stairs, the bannisters and treads gleaming with polish. The woman showed Allie into the middle room facing the street, its walls decorated with photographs of horse races, jockeys’ silks garish. ‘Mr M, it’s the lady from the paper,’ she said, closing the door behind her and leaving Allie facing a dapper middle-aged man sitting behind a massive mahogany desk. His suit was the height of fashion with wide lapels and shoulder pads, but the shade of blue was too startling, and he’d have looked better in the next size up. His mousy hair curled over his collar and was carefully arranged to disguise how far it was receding from his temples. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Alison. Take a seat.’
There were two visitors’ chairs, both lower than McGillivray’s. It was a pathetic ploy, she thought. It made her feel less bad about employing Danny’s suggestion for how to persuade him to agree to an interview. ‘Thanks for agreeing to talk to me,’ she said, her smile stopping a fraction short of a simper.
‘I’m very flattered that you’re here on a day when there’s such important news.’
Allie panicked momentarily. What had she missed? ‘Important news?’
‘The Abba divorce. Goodnight, Vienna for Agnetha and Bjorn.’ He looked smug.
‘Oh.’ Eejit. ‘I don’t cover showbiz, so it’s not a burden on my shoulders.’
‘That’s a pity, I was hoping for some inside gossip. I’ll just have to settle for feeling proud that you consider me one of Scotland’s leading entrepreneurs.’ He delivered the word with a flourish.
‘Well, you can hardly walk down a High Street without seeing a WestBet shopfront. And we’re eager to hear what business leaders think of the upcoming referendum.’ Allie rummaged in her bag and took out the little Sony Pressman she’d treated herself to when she’d got the Clarion job. ‘Do you mind if I record this? I’d hate to misquote you.’ She waved it at him.
‘That’s a neat wee thing,’ he said. ‘Sure, be my guest.’ An expansive gesture. ‘Better safe than sorry.’
Allie pressed ‘record’ as he opened a wooden cigarette box on his desk and offered it to her. ‘No thanks.’
‘Sensible lassie,’ he said, lighting his own. ‘Makes your breath smell. Nobody wants to kiss a lassie who smells like an ashtray.’
Or a man, she thought. ‘Mr McGillivray—’
‘Brian,’ he interrupted. ‘We’re all friends here, Alison.’
Another smile. ‘Brian. Can I ask which way you’ll be voting in the referendum?’
He took a deep drag of his cigarette. ‘I make no secret of that, Alison. It’s a big thumbs-down from me.’ He delivered his verdict as if it were unassailable.
‘Why is that?’
‘It’s pretty obvious if you’re a businessman like me. MPs’ salaries and expenses, new buildings, secretaries and security men. And how’s that going to be paid for? The likes of you and me, Alison. We’re the ones that are going to be paying for somebody else to do the job the British government are already doing.’ He waved the hand holding his cigarette so the smoke swirled around his head.
‘You don’t think Scotland deserves a bigger say in its own affairs?’
McGillivray snorted. ‘Have you ever actually met any of our MPs? I wouldnae trust them to back the winner in a one-horse race. Noses in the trough, the lot of them. And the state of the country? Unions holding us to ransom, fish and fruit rotting at the docks, supermarket shelves empty? No, we’ve got enough government in this country as it is.’ He was warming to his theme. ‘The Labour Party couldnae run a raffle, and none of the others are any better. Give us a parliament with one hand and take more taxes with the other. As if they don’t rob us enough now.’
He was almost making this too easy. ‘It sounds like you don’t agree with this government’s tax regime?’
‘Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how much tax we pay in this country? We’ve got a top rate of 83 per cent. Every pound I earn above a certain amount, I get to keep 17p. Big fat hairy deal. It’s like they’re saying to guys like me, “Don’t get above yourself.”’ He shook his head. ‘So, no. I don’t want to spend more money on politicians.’
‘Do your accountants not help you to save money?’
He scoffed. ‘Pennies. It’s daylight robbery, I tell you.’
Allie took a deep breath. ‘Is that why you sought advice from Paragon Investment Insurance?’
McGillvray’s face closed tight as if a shutter had been pulled down. He crushed out his cigarette savagely. ‘Sorry?’
‘Is that why you decided to take part in Paragon’s money laundering scheme? The one that helps you evade your tax responsibilities?’
He sat still as a statue, his eyes glittering as they watched her.
Allie persisted. ‘We know you paid a hundred thousand pounds in cash to a boatyard on Southampton Water. Maclays boatyard. That money bought a boat called Meridian Flyer. It was sailed across the Atlantic to a boat brokerage in Nassau, where it was bought for cash. Nassau has a famously secretive banking regime. No tax either, on funds like that.’
He inhaled sharply then gave a tight bark of laughter. ‘I thought you were a journalist, not a fairy story writer.’
‘We’re running the story tomorrow. This is your chance to put your side of it.’
‘This is a steaming pile of shite. You’ll get the arse sued off you if you print a word of this.’
‘It might be hard for you to manage that from a prison cell,’ she said, sounding infinitely more calm than she felt. ‘What you’ve participated in, it’s fraud. It’s tax evasion. Al Capone was the biggest gangster in America, but they never got him for masterminding murder or robbery or gun-running. He went to jail for fiddling his taxes. And knowing what we know, I’d say that’s where you’re headed.’ She wasn’t quite sure where her nerve was coming from but it wasn’t deserting her.
‘You’ve got no evidence. You’ve got no evidence because this is a pack of lies.’
‘We know you’re a client of Paragon. We know Paragon brokers the deals and we know they handed over a hundred grand of your money to Maclays just the other week. I don’t know if your boat’s in Nassau yet, but you’d better hope it is before the Royal Navy seize it on the high seas and confiscate it.’
‘Get out,’ he said, his voice low and dark. ‘Get the fuck out of my office, you lying little bitch.’
Allie refused to back down in spite of a shiver of apprehension. ‘If I was you, I’d seriously consider talking to me. Maybe you didn’t know what Paragon were up to. Maybe you’re the kind of innocent who trusts an investment firm even when the deal they’re offering sounds too good to be true. Me, I’d rather people thought I was stupid than crooked.’
McGillivray’s face had turned dark red. ‘You’ve got nothing on me. This is just a daft wee lassie’s fishing trip.’
Allie grinned. ‘Stupid and crooked. I hadn’t considered that possibility. In that case, there’s probably nothing I can do for you, Brian.’ She got to her feet. ‘Enjoy tomorrow’s Clarion.’ She stood up and turned for the door.
‘You’ve no idea who you’re dealing with here, do you?’ His voice was thick and angry. She suspected he’d forgotten about the tape recorder. ‘I know people that’ll make you wish you’d never been born.’
Allie looked over her shoulder and what she saw sent a frisson of real fear through her. He was on his feet, the veneer of affable civility wiped away. She saw the street fighter beneath, the man who had clawed his way to the top of a cut-throat business. ‘Thanks for your time,’ she said, getting out while the going was good. She hurried down the stairs and out the front door. Then she broke into a run and didn’t stop until she was safely behind the wheel of her car with the door locked.
Then Allie let the fear in, her hands trembling and her teeth chattering, her legs too weak to drive. She felt the opposite of heroic. There had been genuine menace in McGillivray. For the first time since she’d started in journalism, Allie understood the power of a threat. Nobody had ever raised a hand to her in anger. Her vulnerability had always been in her imagination; footsteps behind her on a dark street, the unexplained noises of an old building late at night, the drunken leering of an idiot at a party. This, though – this was different. This felt real.
She turned off her tape recorder and wondered how Danny was faring. Part of her hoped he was celebrating forcing an admission from Graeme Brown; but the part of her she was ashamed of hoped he was sitting in his car shaking as hard as she was.